The Vignes girls have big dreams for their futures. The villagers are proud of their Caucasian features and coloring, and most of them could pass for White. Identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes live in Mallard, Louisiana in a community of light-skinned Black people. In the process, the book explores the themes of how identity is constructed, the role that self-loathing plays in creating an alternate persona, and the social ostracism visited on those who are different from the norm in some way. Much of the novel recounts Desiree’s search for her missing twin and how that search is completed by Desiree’s daughter. Desiree has fled an abusive marriage to a Black man and brought her daughter back to Mallard, while Stella is passing for White, is married to a businessman, has a daughter with him, and lives in California. Ten years later, their lives have diverged in radically different directions.
The plot concerns identical twins Desiree and Stella Vignes, who leave their small Louisiana village at the age of 16 to seek their fortune in New Orleans. Since the novel is driven by the perceptions and recollections of its characters, the story does not move in a linear fashion. Just as the time and location shift among numerous places and decades, the limited third-person narrative point of view shifts among multiple people. The story begins in the small village of Mallard, Louisiana, in 1968 and then skips to New Orleans, New York, Southern California, and back to Mallard between 1978 and the early 1980s. The novel is set in several locations during different time periods.
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